EN GUISE D`AMANTS: PO~MES CHOISIS par Dominique O`Neill

of the ways in which patriarchal culture has constructed women as the
Other and denied them freedom as
autonomous individuals. The book
explores-and explodes-the often
contradictory myths of femininity,
as well as the concrete social, economic, and political structures of
patriarchal oppression.
The Second Sex also shows how
women under patriarchy are led to
internalize a belief in their own inferiority and to adopt values that are
inimical to them. Moi argues that
Beauvoir, in her emotional and intellectual subservience to Sartre, is the
prime example of this, though she
fails to recognize it. In fact, many of
the views expressed in TheSecondSex
illustrate this very point. Reading it
today, we may find ourselvesresponding alternately with appreciativerecognition, outrage, and embarrassment. The book juxtaposes male and
femalesexuality,consistently idealizing the former and presenting the
latter with evident distaste. Taking
over the frequently sexist language of
Sartrean Existentialism (in which the
basic human "project" of "throwing
oneself forward into the future" consistently relies on an imagery of male
erection and ejaculation), Beauvoir
somehow arrives at a scheme of values in which childbirth, being "immanent," is inferior to warfare and
murder, which are "transcendent."
Accepting as "universal" a particularly French, male, received view of
literaryexcellence, Beauvoir flatly denies the existence ofany great women
writers, placing Jane Austen, George
Eliot, and Viriginia Woolf far below
Edgar Allen Poe and T. E. Lawrence
(while never even mentioning Mme.
de Lafayette). "Living marginally to
the masculineworld, [woman] sees it
not in its universal form but from her
special point of view." Instead of
finding strengths in woman's special
viewpoint as, for example,Woolfdid,
Beauvoir saw it simply as an impediment to creativity. Indeed, the notion that the male position and point
of view are somehow "universaln is
one Woolf takes particular delight in
puncturing. Much of what seems
VOLUME 17, NUMBER 1
dated today in The Second Sex underscores the wisdom of Woolfs insight
into the danger of being "locked in."
Still, when it was published some
fifty-odd years ago, The Second Sex
had a far-reaching, liberating impact
and, Moi writes, "literally changed
thousands ofwomen's lives." Despite
striving for a phantom "universality"
in its rhetoric and its values, despite
its sexist language, denigration of female sexuality, and underestimation
of various women writers, it emphasized that nothing that existed in current society followed inevitably from
differences in biology; nothing in the
social state, The Second Sex argued,
was in itself "natural." It contained a
scathing critique of bourgeois marriage and of social and economic inequality, and was rightly read as a
rallying cry for woman's liberation.
For Moi, the contradictions in
Beauvoir's work and life illustrate the
paradoxes inherent in being an intellectual woman in our century. Using
life andwork to illuminateeach other,
and setting both in their cultural and
institutional context, Moi's book
skillfully negotiates the reader through
the complexities of the French educational system, the arcane terminology of Existentialism, and the vagaries of Beauvoir's and Sartre's multiple
love affairs. It is an impressive and
rewarding work of cultural criticism.
Moi pays less attention to the novels
than to The Second Sex and to
Beauvoir's abundantly recorded life,
moving gracefully among the multivolumed autobiography, the letters,
diaries, published interviews,and biographical studies.Although Beauvoir
did not explicitly think of herself as a
feminist until shejoined the woman's
movement when she was in her sixties, the ground-breaking impact of
The Second Sex justifies Moi's description of her as "the greatest feminist theorist of our century."
If I have compared her here to
Woolf, this reflects my own internal
debate with Moi's unqualified claim
concerning Beauvoir's preeminence.
Yet while Woolf may strike us today
as more consistently "right," her impact was delayed and her readership
has been more limited. Taken together, Woolf and Beauvoir illustrate
the poles of a feminism of difference
and a feminism of equality. We are
still learning from them both.
EN GUISE D'AMANTS:
PO~MESCHOISIS
Miriam Waddington. Trad. de
I'anglais par Christine Klein-Lataud.
Montreal: Editions du Noroft, 1994.
par Dominique O'Neill
C'est une vie entikre que rkcapitule ce
petit livre qui, sans en avoir mine,
recense plus de cinquante ans
d'kcriture. Choisis parmi les pokmes
de TheLastLandrcape, publieen 1992,
et de Collected P o e m qui lui-mtme
compilait onze recueils de podsie ainsi
que des inkdits, soixante-quatre
pokmes profilent I'oeuvre d'une des
grandesdames des lettres canadiennes.
Miriam Waddington explique ainsi
I'abondance de son muvre podtique: cc
La podsie est au coeur mtme de mavie
[. ..] une constantesource deplaisir et
d'tmerveillement, qui m'a engagie
toute entikre, h tous les niveaux. [. ..]
Elle a toujours ktk prksente en filigrane
dans mes autres activitds et rbles dans
le monde: ceux de femme, mere,
amante, amie et professeure. r
Et ce sont h leur tour ces rbles qui
nourrissent ses pokmes. Elle puise
dans le quotidien pour y trouver sa
matikre et pose sur sa vie et celle de
ceux qui I'entourent un regardlucide,
poignant ou ironique, souvent relevd
d'humour noir (uLes vieilles femmes
/ devraient vivre comme les vers / sous
la terre / et ne sortir / qu'aprks une
bonne averse. N)
Ces thkmes sont donc d'actualid:
I'identit6, la fernme, I'amour,
I'environnement.Canadienne et juive
de souche russe, elle s'interroge sur la
multiplicitd de cette identitd,
dvoquant avec amour son enfance h
Winnipeg et se plaisant h rapprocher
satisfaire I des images [...l &oh me
added eccentricities, her characters
ses d e w pays de neige: cc Cetteville du
nord [. .] est-ce Winnipeg ou Leningrad ? / Elles ont toutes d e w / une
tglise dkcharnde / dressde seule /
comme un violoncelle dans la neige.,
L'amour est le douloureux
mouvement, la dechirure d'un passage du pluriel familial au singulier
d'une femme divorcee dont les enfants ont quitte le logis. Une unique
voix dialogue avec un U tu n qui ne
rkpond pas, qu'il soit le mari divorce
dont la mort la hante, puisque pour
elle, il cst doublement dCckdC,
emportant avec lui leur jeunesse, le
fils qui ne connait pas vraiment sa
mere, ou l'amant au corps de paysage
blanc.
u Je suis seule maintenant n h i t elle en 1976 (UPokme de foret ))).
Mais en fait, on est conscient d'une
grande solitude au cceur meme de
l'oeuvre, un manque si profond que
l'arnour ne saurait le combler: u Car je
suis moi et tu es toi / C'est lh notre
unique moisson .n Ce manque est
sans espoir: le seul aboutissement de
lavie est lavieillessequ'elle maudit, et
la mort qui la guette et la nargue. La
mort apparaft partout, meme dans
ses pokmes de jeunesse, centrale et
omniscient-les
tombeaux jalonnent l'oeuvre, meme si le titre d'un
pokme semblait annoncer un
renouveau, tel u Printemps n qui se
termine ainsi: cc le toi / dans les champs
noyes / de ma jeunesse est / la
photographie fantie / de mon mari
mort I assis parmi l les tombes [. ..l .n
Pour Miriam Waddington, le
pokme est uneconstruction organique
et rkaliste qu'elle fasonne, non
seulement de ses reflexions et
emotions, mais aussi de son corps et
deson souffle au moment de creation.
Ce point de vuedonne hses pokmes
leur simplicitk, leur style accessible et
limpide, leursverscourts et contenus.
Si d'aucuns lui ont reprochd d'dcrire
des vers qui u ne sont pas assez
profonds / ou [qui] n'ont pas assa
d'esprit ,Wsi elle ne revendique pour
e w qu'u une gdce ephemere ,B la
pokte choisit de repondre h cette critique par une question: u je me
demande / pourquoi je ne peux me
vient 1 cette passion 1 pour la clart6
[...l? n
Christine Klein-Lataud, h qui I'on
doit la traduction d'Un oiscau dam h
marion de Margaret Laurence, a rendu
cet Cchantillon de l'ceuvre poetique
de Miriam Waddington avec elegance
et dconomie. Elle a rkussi hen faire un
ouvrage homogkne et representatif,
se permettant, pour achever ce but,
de classer les pokmes hors de l'ordre
chronologique et d'effacer les manidrismes des annkes 60 et 70, c'est-hdire la dispositiongraphique des mots
sur la page et la coupure-qui se
voulait choquante mais dont on se
fatiguait vite-entre d e w mots qui
s'appartiennent.
O n ne peut faire h cet ouvrage
qu'un petit reproche: ColIcctedPoem
etait nanti d'un index detaillt,
comprenant l'annde, le titre et soustitre de l'ouvrage dans lequel chaque
poeme avait paru. En guisc d'amants,
lui, ne donne aucun indice chronologique, ce qui semble dommage
puisqu'une date discrete la fin de
chaque pokme ou meme dans l'index
nous aurait permis de retracer le
cheminement de la pensde de la pokte.
come to life easily in their everyday
roles. They are accessible, yet intriguingly complex and unknowable.
The play opens with a dramatic
bedroom scene; Dallas is having a
nightmare and Billie, his wife, is trying to wake him from his tortured
sleep. Dallas is screaming and covered in sweat, which in his dream
state he believes is blood. He doesn't
recognize Billie or his surroundings;
she knows the screams and intimate
movements of her frightened husband exactly as he plays them outthis occurrence is a common one. In
his wakehl state she tries to get him
to talk about his recurring dream and
what it might mean, but he won't
discuss it with her and leaves for a
drink. The mystery remains until the
concluding scene.
Dallas is the owner of Club
Chernobyl, where the majority of the
play is set. H e designed it as a "concept club"; the interior is made to
resemble a damaged nuclear reactor.
Danger is the marketing campaign to
create Club Chernobyl as a hip, dark,
noveltyclub. It'sopeningnight in the
club and it is virtually empty. Astorm
hits town and draws together an unlikely mix ofcharacters. Warren cleverly employs the ex-treme weather
conditions of the outside world to
illuminate the inner psychological
worlds of her characters.
The storm fills the streets, bringing Gina into the club, and floods the
basement, giving rise to Veronica.
Gina is the innocent virginal character in this play; "inexperiencednis her
repeated description of herself. She is
released from her inhibitions and
gathers confidence through the extreme and intense interactions in the
club. She joins the craziness of life,
gaining a passport to the real world
through her encounter with Dallas
and the others. Ironically, she experiences her self fully for the first time in
Billie's little black dress. Veronica is
Gina's polar opposite. This character
has adeep understanding ofthe darker
side of life and its inherent danger;
she lives it. She is a reminder and
warning to the characters and to the
.
CLUB CHERNOBYL
Dianne Warren. Regina: Coteau
Books, 1994.
bJ.Rochon
Reading a play can be a far more
challenging experience than watching it being performed. Finding the
content and the drama in a play on
the page can feel like an excavation,
from the directions and setting descriptions. This is certainly not so
with Club Chernobyl, the newest play
by the Saskatchewan playwright,
Dianne Warren. Her play contains
minimal stage commands and allows
for a freely imaginative read. Even on
the page, the content is dark, strangely
real, in its danger and nervous tension-building techniques. With their
CANADIAN WOMANI STUDIESILES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME